Assessment of the Psychomotor Domain Learning

Abstract

The demand for skilled professionals is increasing in the 21st century to ensure the quality of products and services in terms of safety, comfort, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability, and productivity. The integration of skills-based courses in all higher education programmes has become mandatory irrespective of discipline. The national education policy, UGC, AICTE and NBA have incorporated skill-based courses in programme structure. The development of skills and ultimately competency and proficiency to accept the challenges of the world of work has become crucial. Development of psychomotor skills and proficiency in using the skills requires laboratories, workshops, project labs, research labs, incubation centres, internships, and apprenticeships. Once the skills are developed, they need to be certified along with proficiency through valid, reliable, transparent, and credible assessment. In this paper, the importance of developing the skills and proficiency, the psychomotor domain of learning and hierarchy of learning, the process of learning skills, portfolio-based assessment, types of assessment tools and the process of designing assessment tools are explained. The current limitations of higher education institutions in developing psychomotor skills and remedies to overcome these limita-tions are suggested.